


The Night's King

by adelheid



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bloodplay, Dark Jon, Dark Jon Snow, Dubious Consent, F/M, Gore, Incest, Rough Sex, Squirting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 00:44:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9410024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adelheid/pseuds/adelheid
Summary: "...his eyes were black orbs, devoid of light and warmth and laughter. He gazed upon the traitors with indifference, worse than indifference; a kind of prehistoric humor, the mirth of the old gods." Dark!Jon/Sansa. (post 6x02)





	1. Chapter 1

Frosted lips parted, and the boy gave his last breath.

He had strung up the child first. He had wanted them to watch him die. Slowly, drop by drop.

Innocence was hard to destroy, but once it was defeated, it made for quite a sight. 

His body went limp, swinging in the winter cold. The blood in his veins slowly congealed. His heart became a stone. 

The rest of the hanging men swiveled mournfully before the Watch. Before the damned Lord Commander.

The one who had risen from his grave.

Some would say only his shape had risen, and his soul was still sleeping underground. For his eyes were black orbs, devoid of light and warmth and laughter. He gazed upon the traitors with indifference, _worse_ than indifference; a kind of prehistoric humor, the mirth of the old gods.

The world of the living had cast him into the cold abyss, and the world of the dead had spat him back up. He was wanted nowhere. A true bastard, if there ever was one.

He turned towards his cowardly Brothers who kept their heads cradled in their chests.

“My Watch is ended.”

 

 

He left a shadow in their hearts as he marched into the drafts of snow, followed by his Ghost.

But there was also sweet relief.

They had not been cut down. They had been spared.

Because Jon Snow was out for blood.

 

 

 

And blood he begat.

Some men believed they were invincible and threw caution at the wind.

He did not have to sneak into Winterfell. There was no need for clever subterfuge. He was as ghostly as his direwolf. He ambled carelessly along the battlements, his steps leaving no sound in his wake. He stared into the sentinels’ absent eyes, he unsheathed the hilts at their waists, and the Bolton men felt and saw nothing.

When he cut their throats, one by one, they fell into his arms like sowed oats.

The castle was asleep, no one gave the warning signal. No one saw when thirty men were grazed from the face of the earth.

Jon knelt in the black pool of blood and washed his face, smearing bloodied thumbs over his eyes, trying to pour the life back into him.

He left the meat to Ghost.

 

 

(Oh, he had looked into the abyss. He had looked for _hours, days, and centuries._  Before he had been returned to the living, he had sucked on death's teats, he had licked her cunt dry. When he had woken, Lady Melisandre lay dead on the floor in his place, her body stormed.)

 

 

 

He fed on the allies next. The Karstarks and the Umbers, gathered under Lord Bolton’s false roof, plotting to hack the North into pieces and sell it to the Lannisters.

Not that Jon cared about that anymore.

There was only the ancestral calling left; tooth for tooth and eye for eye.

Perhaps a kitchen wench or a stable boy screamed, but the sounds were muffled, hopeless. Too small to end the agony. 

In one night, he killed half the host. He razed the garrison and decimated the faithless Houses of the North.

There was no exhaustion. No quenching. The thirst went on and on, with every cursed breath he took. His bones did not feel weary as he slashed and mangled and chopped and carved, because his murders were abstract; he was merely reaping.

 

 

(The Night's King. He had been a Lord Commander once. The thirteenth to his name. A dreadful number, a destiny without escape. 

He had listened to the famished song of ice for too long. He had started singing it too. Until, buried deep within the veils of winter, he had spied a maiden sleeping with her eyes open. She had bright stars for eyes and when she took him inside her, she showed him how warm it was to be cold. 

And thereafter, no one could stop him and her. Until Brandon the Breaker. But where was he now?)

 

 

 

Theon saw the shadow crawl across the wall.

It was the flicker of candlelight, nothing more. His frightened mind was creating monsters, when there were plenty to go around. He blinked once, to wash away the ugly sight, and when he opened his eyes again, Ramsay’s head was rolling across the wooden floor.

Theon screamed.

The old Reek inside of him crawled down on his hands and knees and cried at the horror.

“Master…”

“You have a new master now.”  There was no malice in that voice, no victory. It was almost soft. Familiar.

“J-Jon.”

He was white and spectral as freshly fallen snow.

 

 

 

Sansa Stark awoke to the smell of pungent blood. In the first moments, she was deliriously happy. Moon blood meant she had not yet given Ramsay a dreadful son. She slipped her hand between her thighs, to feel the happy blessing of waste. But the sheets were dry on her legs. She opened her eyes and looked down at herself.

There was no blood. Just the acrid, overwhelming smell of it.

She walked barefoot to the small window and sank her fingers between the iron latticework. She could hardly see the world outside - just as Ramsay had wanted. But even if she had been able to see, there was nothing there.

Winterfell was a warm, red bath.

The snow was pink, like flayed skin.

 

 

 

What had happened in the night? Was this a dream?

Had Ramsay killed them all? Why? Had he received bad news? Did that mean someone was coming to save her? Was Stannis at the gates?

Or was it just a game? Was Ramsay climbing up the tower steps to finish her off too? Had he grown bored with everyone and everything? There had always been madness in him.

Sansa fumbled with her woolen dress to reach the secret pocket at her breast. She took out the small key she had managed to pilfer from her gaolers. How much harm could she do with its blunt edge?

The door burst open before she could find out.

It was Theon, his face haggard and yet ignited with a strange, sickly light.

“He – he wants to see you.”

She released a disappointed breath and clenched the key between her fingers.

Perhaps today would be the day when she finally risked her life for freedom.

 

 

 

The Great Hall was eerily quiet. The whispers were clipped and terrified. Sansa pulled the cloak over her shoulders and looked down at her feet. This must be why she missed the fact that the men around her were scarce and the few that still breathed looked like swollen moths whose wings had been scorched by fire.  

She weaved through them with no regard, her mind too preoccupied with Ramsay. If he had indulged in so many killings last night, he must be in a good mood. She shuddered with horror.

What would he do to her?

 

 

The first thing she saw, strangely, was the spike. Suppose she should have noticed the head attached to it, but years of being forced to look at dismembered corpses had taught her to notice only the instruments.

His face was puffy and fat in death. Ridiculous, almost. Could this be the man who had tarnished her soul? The man who had ravaged her body?

She would have laughed.

His father’s head also stood on a spike next to his. Two turgid-looking twins.

“Sister.”

_Sister.  Whose sister? What is that voice? Who is calling me?_

“Winter has come.”

There he stood on the dais, a black shroud of death. His eyes were the onyx of dragons, his hair a wiry mass of curls, his smile a familiar memory, but twisted, corrupted into nothingness.

Sansa collapses on her knees. The floor was still slick with blood.

 

 

 

_He found her chamber at the top of a tower._

_Little Sansa was sleeping._

_Only she was not so little anymore._

_The girl he once knew had seemingly vanished, replaced with a changeling in the night._

_Still, he recognized the dormant fire in her hair, the pleasing oval of her naïve face. The grace of a weeping dove._

_She had been summer in all its festering glory, now she was a faded winter._

_She had never been kind to him, but she had never been cruel either. She had been perfectly empty, like a blank piece of parchment._

_Somehow, that was worse than hatred or love._

_His sweet-smelling half-sister. Not so sweet-smelling now. He used to listen to Arya disparage her. He used to nod his head and smile. He used to think "there goes the little lady, practicing at being queen".  Porcelain beauty._

_Look at her now._

_Her skin had been broken in places. His trained eye could see the bruises that a wicked hand had gifted her. He could also see the dark circles under her eyes, the gauntness of her features, the tears on her lips, the liquid fear running through her veins._

_For a brief, eclipsing moment, his fingers itched._

_He was dead now. There were no vows to keep, no promises, no duties._

_The world was his. The North was his. Winterfell was his. And the broken dove was his._

_What to do with her?_


	2. Chapter 2

  
What made her skin prickle was  _Theon_.

She had seen him in various terrified shades as Reek, but she had never seen this absolute, ancestral dread before.

It was something solid and larger than fear. It was - it was his conscience.

Theon was weeping and gnawing at his fingers because Jon Snow was the gods' righteous punishment. 

He knelt his head down at his feet, as if waiting for the ax to fall. 

 

 

 

 

Jon. Oh -  _Jon_. A brother she had dreamt of as dead, or half-dead in any case. Lost beyond the Wall, buried deep within Castle Black, so removed from her that she never allowed herself to hope he might return to help her.

Why  _would_  he help her anyway? She had few memories of him growing up, and they were neither fond nor bitter. He had mattered so little in her life, not because she had despised or shunned him, but because her mother had made sure he was kept away. Winterfell was big enough that you could lose yourself in it. They had moved in different circles. They had breathed different air.

And when he had left for the Wall, he had been as good as dead in her mind. No one returned from the Wall. She had not mourned him. She had thought, "he might be happy there". 

Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid girl.

She could not read anything of the past in his face, but she knew one thing; he wasn't here to help her. 

 

 

 

 

Still, she walked up to him, head bowed, hands folded in her dress to conceal the key, and thanked him silently for "setting her free" from her captors. 

And he  _laughed_. 

It wasn't a low chuckle, or a soft guffaw. It was a loud, crude laugh like the scratching of nails. 

She stared at her feet, afraid to look up and see Jon's face being inhabited by something else,  _someone_  else.

The laugh echoed down the Great Hall, whipping everyone in the room, making them bend like branches. 

Sansa glanced over her shoulder. There was no longer any difference between the Houses, all men looked grim and sour and lost. 

"Burn the corpses," he ordered to the living. His voice still had the quality of youth. She shivered.

"The dead walk," he continued, and she heard the hacking motion of his sword against the table. "I intend to cut off their legs." 

There was a lapse in silence, but everyone was alert and listening. They were absorbing his words. This was their new vocabulary. This dark creature was talking to them in a different tongue, and they had to master it completely. To those who live to serve, it does not matter who commands. 

Perhaps in the days to come, a few loyal men would start an uprising, but this morning, the blood was overflowing and no one had the heart or courage to face the man who had shed it so liberally. Winterfell was a rookery where all the birds had died. 

 

 

 

"Walk with me, Sister," he said - a demand, not a request. 

"I'd rather not go outside, Jon."

He stepped down to where she was genuflecting, a figure swaddled in dirty blue, an orphan girl. 

"Fresh air will do you good," he replied lightly, but the lightness was only a trick. A test, perhaps. 

"All-right." 

 

 

 

The snow seemed to boil under the weight of flesh and blood. The entrails of men and animals peppered the courtyards like blasphemous offerings. Sansa clenched a hand over her mouth, nails digging into her cheeks. 

She had never seen anything like it, not even in nightmares. She did not think anyone capable of this carnage. Not Joffrey. Not even Ramsay. Because they would have been cruel, they would have been malicious. But there was nothing like that here; this was not debauchery, this was not  _human_.

"What are those  _shapes_?" she asked, her voice hoarse, barely audible to her ears. 

They were made by design. They looked like delicate spirals, like winding snakes. 

Patterns of limbs in the snow. 

"There aren't any," he replied tonelessly, but she could tell that he was lying, or simply choosing not to tell her. 

She shrank back, dizzy with the smell and the sight and the  _touch_ of it (she imagined the scales of snakes, soft under her fingers), and her foot would have gone under if he had not suddenly gripped her arm. His gloved fingers clenched around her bones like a vise. 

His hold was not painful, but it was implacable. 

He looked down at her, his eyes like windows to an empty house. "Careful. The ground is treacherous." 

Sansa swallowed down the bile. If she fell, the river of slaughter would drown her. 

"I'm fine. I'm -"  _Jon, how could you? How could you do this? What happened to you? What happened?_   "I'm only tired. Tell me - tell me, how is the Wall faring? The winter must be harsh."

Pretty questions, pretty manners. Keep silent, do not offend. Pretend as if nothing were amiss.

It was all she had in the world, and she was going to cling to it until her last breath. 

A flicker of something undistinguished crossed his face. "It may fall, or it may not. It's all the same really."

" _Fall_?" she echoed, eyes growing wide. "But it can't do that. It has been protecting us for centuries." 

"Aye. Do you feel protected, my lady?" he asked bald-faced. She could hear an otherworldly echo in his voice. 

Sansa lowered her head. His cool fingers were still wrapped around her wrist, and the gesture felt both alien and familiar. As if, many moons ago, Jon had held her wrist like this. 

_No. There wouldn't have been occasion for that._

"I am protected now that you're here, _Jon_ ," she spoke stiffly, biting down on the last word.

"Do you believe that?" 

"Shouldn't I?" she asked, her voice hopelessly thin. It was only an ornament, one final lock before the chamber of her heart was burst open and all the dread would spill out.

_What are you doing here, Jon? Why have you left the Wall?_

Jon did not answer, but he let go of her hand. "Come." 

 

 

 

(She could smell the flesh he had consumed, or perhaps that was Ghost, shadowing his every step.

Did he remember that she'd once had a wolf too? 

She bent down to stroke the lavish white fur, but Ghost moved away, as if offended.)

 

 

 

They walked the battlements together, watching the men below carry the scattered limbs into the center of a pile of wood. They were making a pyre. They seemed cowed by their task, utterly defeated. They ambled across the courtyard like droll figurines in a mummery. 

The spiral patterns were slowly being broken. Sansa watched with rapt attention, as if at any moment, these massacred snakes would come to life and the dead would start screaming. 

But nothing happened. 

"Jon. What if they attack Winterfell?"

He was leaning against a stone pillar, surveying the oceans of snow that stretched beyond the gates. 

"Who will?"

Sansa clenched her fingers around the key at her breast. "The other Houses. When they hear news of what you've - what has happened."

"Let them attack. They will die. Here, or on the journey."

She could not stand his cryptic tone, his careless words. They drove a chill into her bones.  _Who are you?_

"What makes you so sure?"

At that, he almost smiled, but it was only a perverted slant of lips, a cold flashing of teeth. "I've given you ample proof, haven't I?"

"But  _how_ did you do it?" she asked, forgetting her manners. 

Jon considered her in silence. Sansa squirmed under his gaze. She felt he could see through her clothes and underthings, even through skin and bone.

"Not  _why_  I did it?" he taunted, but it did not sound like a taunt. It sounded like another test. 

She blinked. "I - you were freeing me -"

A lie, a lie, a pretty  _lie_.

"I know you've got a key at your breast," he said, almost lazily, staring at the drifts of snow. "I know you want to use it, Sister."

Her lips parted, but no air came out. Just a hollow cavity. Her hands slipped away from her dress, numb with shame. 

"I don't know what you're talking about -"

It was so fast, it felt like a descent. 

His hands were upon her like claws. His fingers sank in her hair, pulling her down, angling her body against the embankment. The back of her head felt the cold sting of rough stone.  

Sansa looked up at the sky; grey - as his eyes used to be.

Her spine was bent, her body exposed to him like a question. He towered over her, eyes scouring her from head to toe. 

"Jon -"

One gloved hand fell upon her dress. It lay cold against her waist, feeling her frantic heartbeat underneath the cloth. He could also feel her ribs. Ramsay had rarely fed her well. She was coltish, brittle.

His hand lingered for a moment against her sharp bones, drawing out their shape, like spirals, like snakes in the snow.

Then his hand started a slow ascend to her chest.

" _Jon."_

She placed a pleading hand on his wrist. Her breath was coming out in short puffs. She did not know what she was feeling, but there was something coiling in her stomach. It felt like a dream. 

"Let me," she begged. 

He grunted something in reply, an animal sound that was neither invitation nor denial.

She reached up with trembling fingers to unlace her bosom. His eyes never once strayed from her figure. 

She produced the rusted key with some difficulty, afraid of further exposure.

He took the proffered instrument and let it lie in his palm. His gaze was galvanizing. 

"You were going to wait for the right moment. Then you were going to stab me," he said, almost conversationally.

Sansa balked. Not because he was wrong. But because, until this very moment, she had not realized he was  _right_. She had been fingering the key ever since she had been called down from her tower. She had been thinking of slaughter, she had been thinking  _no one_  is left pure. We all dirty our hands.

She had been thinking  _he's mad_.

Because this was not Jon. It couldn't be. 

"I - I'm sorry."

He lowered his head, dark curls falling in his eyes. "Don't be."

He raised the key between his fingers. Her eyes followed his movements with bated breath. He lowered the sharp tip until it touched her skin. She almost gasped at the contact. It was warm. He dragged the iron gently against her throat, mapping her veins, mounting her jaw, scratching her lips. Her tongue almost darted out. 

It felt like a threat, and something else.

Death's caress. 

Sansa shuddered. 

"You thirst for violence, Sister," he said, resting the key between her eyes. "As we all do."

The echo of his voice came from the crypts below, from the line of dead fathers and kings, all those dead statues. 

He released her. 

Her body lay limp against the stone embankment, the snow melting into her cloak. The key fell at her feet and slipped between the cracks into the white abyss. 

 

 

 

(She'd had a wolf once, did he remember?)

 

 

 

He waited for her to gather her bearings. His patience was infinite. She bundled herself up again, lowered her head, and walked before him down the battlements. 

Had anyone seen - ? Did it matter? 

She did not thirst for violence. He was  _wrong_. If there was a thirst in her, it was obscure, unnameable. A thing to let lie in the shadows. A spiral. 

 

 

 

 

He watched as her blood-red hair danced in the wind. Her movements were slow and precise. Her eyes were pools of clear water, the kind that purifies steel. 

Pretty little sister, a trinket that's broken.

He used to think nothing of her.

And then, when their father died, he thought her as good as dead. He thought King's Landing would bury her. But she had survived somehow, had survived them all. 

She had not been allowed to be queen, but she was not allowed to die either. 

The world spat her back, every time. 

She was a Stark. She had ice in her veins, just like him. 

 

 

 

 

(The smoke rose into the air, acrid, foul, and sweet. The pyre was incandescent. Men and women gathered around it, watching the feast of flames, waiting for the fire to consume them too. A beast was howling, but perhaps it was Theon. 

Sansa was not there. She was hidden in her room. She thought she _could_ hide. 

He knew what he wanted to do with her. 

Yes, he knew.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the wonderful feedback, I hope this chapter did not disappoint. Pretty dark content to follow.


	3. Chapter 3

\- it's just a temporary slide back into the abyss 

(DESTINATIONS)

 

 

 

Sansa sat next to the heart tree with her feet and fingers dipped in snow. Her eyes observed the gentle tremors of the lake’s surface, the shallow spheres growing wider and wider, like the sighs of an old woman, slowly expiring. Red leaves had fallen in her hair, and as she pulled one out, she thought she saw her mother’s face in it. It was stupid, really. The leaf was overrun with black veins, but there was no pulse behind them.

She couldn’t really pray. Not here or in the Sept. The gods were still there, waiting for her to return, and how could she not believe in them since they had brought Jon back from the dead? But maybe it was _because_ they had revealed themselves in this unnatural act that she turned away from them.

She could not reach out to that holy place inside her. It might have never existed.

It was good, though, to get out of the castle and sit here alone. Here, it did not smell like blood.

It was only that she felt watched.

She had left her brother in the Keep, and yet she felt his eyes on her even here. She turned around, inspecting the tall drifts of snow for intruders. But there was only her and the weirwood.

Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling…

A raven flew suddenly out of the heart tree and scaled the horizon above her head. Its wings beat wide and slow, as if inviting her to look. Sansa gritted her teeth.  The dark flutter reminded her of him.   

 

 

 

The servants had set the table alone for them in her father’s old solar.

Jon had Theon serve them and pour wine in their goblets. The broken man who had once been Reek had suffered an alchemy of the soul. He was dressed in good clothes again and he looked a touch less pale, but there was something peculiar about his fear, for he was still very much afraid. When he had been under the Boltons’ control, he would slink away in the shadows and only stare down at his feet, but now he kept _looking_ at Jon. He kept trying to signal him with pleading, mournful eyes, as if one word, one touch from him could release him. Jon steadfastly ignored him, which seemed to cause Theon a great deal of pain.

It was very odd. It was as if Theon yearned with all his being to stand under Jon’s scorching gaze. Like cattle, hankering after a butcher.

Sansa wished they could trade places. For Jon was looking only at her. He dismissed Theon as soon as the dishes were laid out. And he continued to watch his sister.

Sansa wouldn’t have minded it so much if there was _something_ in those eyes, something to cling to and understand. But they reflected nothing. When the flames burning in the braziers flickered across his face, they were absorbed into the swarm of black insects that nestled behind his eyelids.

What those insects spoke to each other she could not hear, but they must have echoed the horrors of the underworld. He alone had a keyhole into hell.

Sansa shuddered in her seat.

Jon seized upon her reaction and the white scar that ran from his left eye to his jaw turned sharp as a blade.

“Do I offend you, Sister?”

Sansa gripped the edges of her chair.

“Of course not, Jon,” she hastened to say. “I…only hope you are resting well.”

“Do I look tired, then?” he asked coolly.

Sansa shook her head. “You look hale, my lord.”

“ _Hale_ ,” he echoed with the ghost of a sinister smile. “Tell me, do you ever have nightmares?”

The question almost made her want to laugh. How could one _not_ have nightmares, living as she did? She could not remember the last time she had dreamt of something good. The fabric of her childhood dreams eluded her, like a precious tapestry lost in the fire.

“Every night.”

“And what do you see in the nightmares?”

She fingered her fork absently, staring at the cold meat in her plate. “King’s Landing.”

“The great capital. Never seen it while I was alive,” he remarked, stretching his hand towards the pitcher of wine. “But I saw it in death.”

Against her will, Sansa perked her ears. She was a little curious. How could one _see_ a place one had never been to?

“I saw it all in flames, from Aegon’s High Hill to the Gate of the Gods. The flames were green and no water could put them out,” he told her, pouring more wine into her goblet.

Sansa opened her lips. She did not know what to say. He seemed to know the design of the city, or else to have conjured it from hearsay. But she could not be sure.

“Green flames?” she asked timidly. “It sounds like –”

“Wildfire,” he finished for her, watching the fork she kept twisting between her fingers. Sansa dropped it with a soft clatter.   

“Do you see it in your nightmares? The fire?” he inquired, pushing the goblet in front of her.

“…no, the city still stands.”

Jon smiled a glass smile. “Not for long. Now drink, my lady.”

Sansa gripped her fingers in her lap. “I think I’ve had enough for one evening, Jon.”

“I don’t. Drink.”

It was not a request. His face was unyielding stone.

“All of it,” he added, pointing at the goblet.

Sansa clenched her jaw.  She was tempted to say no, except you couldn’t deny Jon when he sat next to you like this, a living shroud, pouring death into your ears. She obliged him, like the good sister she was. But only because he was her brother and – and even if he had returned so altered to her, he _had_ returned. Ramsay was dead. She could drink to that.

She tipped the goblet and let the wine run down her throat.

Jon watched the small convulsions of her throat, the way each gulp produced a spasm.

She was not used to heavy drink. She remembered the Queen Regent’s thirsty habit and how Cersei’s drinking had made her stomach turn. She wanted nothing to do with it. She had never enjoyed the taste, never understood the purpose. Even on her wedding night, when she had drunk to appease her nerves, when Tyrion Lannister had offered her a small kindness, she had felt very little consolation. Now she wanted to vomit and spit the red wine all over the floor.

But Jon was watching intently. So she kept drinking until her mouth closed up with the bitter taste of it.

The red spilled from her lips on her chin and down her exposed neck. The drops glittered like rubies on her skin.

Sansa tried to wipe them off with her sleeve, but she only managed to spill more of the goblet’s contents. 

Flustered with shame, she removed a handkerchief from her pocket and began to dab her chest.

Jon stared at the shaking movement of her hands.

“There’s wine on the floor too,” he informed her gravely. Sansa looked down and saw that a few drops had landed at her feet. She wasn’t sure what Jon expected her to do, but she did not want to risk upsetting him, so she rose from her chair and sank gently to the floor. She rubbed at the hard stones with her handkerchief until the wine was gone.

“There.”

She did not notice Jon had risen from the table and was standing by one of the windows which was covered in hard frost. Still, he seemed to see something beyond the eddies of ice.

“Come here,” he instructed her gently.

Sansa breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps he was done with talk of King’s Landing. She gathered her skirts and meant to rise from the floor, but he coughed a dissent and shook his head.

Sansa paused in her ascension. She did not understand.

“Come,” he called again, and his hand pointed to the floor.

Sansa swallowed thickly. She fidgeted with the handkerchief until she felt it dampen between her fingers. The room was suddenly too warm, although the fire had thinned in the braziers.

At length, she could not ignore his command. She placed her palms on the hard stone and started crawling towards him.

 

 

 

He watched her body dispassionately, like a butcher pausing his knife in the middle of carving. The sight of her on her hands and knees pleased the black blood in his veins.

He had no intention of hurting her…yet. Her hips curved innocently behind her, and her scarlet hair twined around her waist like a serpent.  But there was something…familiar about her movements. The way she kept her head bowed, the way her fingers scraped the floor.

“You’ve crawled before,” he said, to no one.

Sansa’s eyes swam with unshed tears. She choked back a protest, a small “ _Jon_ ”.

“ _Who_ have you crawled for?” he asked, his voice falling like hailstones on her eardrums.

“Joffrey Baratheon.”

When she saw the storm building in his irises, she quickly added, “He’s dead now.  Poisoned.”

“Who else?” he asked gruffly.

Sansa felt a twinge in her knees.  They would be red when she went to bed. She shifted under his gaze. “I – I don’t know. The whole Court. He had me beg in public for my life.”

She could see his jaw lock with rage, but it wasn’t the anger of a brother on behalf of his sister. She did not know what it was; only that it frightened her.

“Show me.”

Sansa opened her mouth, but she had no words to convey the humiliation. She stared at him.

“ _Show_ me,” he repeated with an echo in his voice, a fringe of ice that settled on her spine.

Sansa could feel a dull ache in her ribs, as if Ser Meryn had just hit her with the heel of his boot. The past was never really the past. She found she could effortlessly slip into her old skin. 

If this was what her brother wanted, she would oblige the fool.

She started crying quietly, tears rolling down her cheeks like mother of pearl. She whispered “Your _Grace_ ” and scratched the hard floor until she felt little cuts under her nails.

“Louder,” Jon instructed.

Sansa’s sobs intensified and her words became a long litany, a kind of desperate prayer.

“Please, Your Grace, I had nothing to do with my traitor brother. I love you, Your Grace, I would never disobey you, I want to be your faithful queen.”

It was strange; she had not _meant_ to say all of this to him, but the words flew out of her mouth against her will. It was as if someone were prying them with hot iron tongs.

She was spitting the teeth of memory.

Sansa lowered her forehead until it kissed the ground. “Please have mercy, Your Grace. I want to have your sons, I want to be a good wife to you, I have no other family but you.”

Heavy sobs wracked her body, made it harder to breathe.

It was at this point that one of the Kingsguards would hit her or disrobe her, or both. Sansa felt this irrational fear that Ser Meryn would burst through the door right here, in the heart of Winterfell, and cut open her dress.

She turned on her back, covering her eyes with her hands, her red hair falling all around her.

She lay on the floor, still chanting “Your Grace, _please_ …”

And she could not say if this was her own doing, or if Jon was pulling something out of her.

Her brother gazed upon the devastation with something like satisfaction, though that was too easy a word. It was the glut of the beast who had fed. His hidden tusks thrummed every time she called him _Your Grace._

He walked towards her prostrate figure.

“Remove your hands, Sansa.”

Her name on his lips startled her from her trance. She lowered her hands from her eyes and gazed at the smoky ceiling. It did not seem to end where it should. She had never noticed this about her home, that every roof was a bottomless, pitiless mouth. Her face was soaked in tears. She felt the cold floor through the thin petticoat.

From the corner of her eye she saw his boot.

If he took just one more step, he would tread on her wine-red hair.

Sansa was suddenly so afraid she could hardly fill up her lungs with breath. She raised her arm over her head and her fingers hit upon hard leather.

She gripped his boot with the need of the drowning, clinging to a raft.

Jon swam into her vision like a tower in the middle of the void. 

He bent down to her, and she gasped when she saw that there was no longer any white in his eyes. They were pure, pitch black. She had heard of demons from Sothoryos, lizards born without irises.

Her chest rose and fell as the whiteless eyes traveled down her recumbent body and then stared into nothing.

“I can see him. Joffrey Baratheon,” he told her, gazing into hell. “He’s screaming. Doves are pecking at his eyes. He’s wearing a crown of fire. It’s burning him to the bone. But the flesh is always remade. The gods are good.”

His voice was thick with humor as he described the picture.

Sansa watched his face upside down, still clinging to his boot. For one mad instant, she wished she had his sight too. 

“Can – can you _really_ see him?”

Jon’s spectral smile paled. “I can see them all. Not all of them burn, though. Some like to drown. Salt water tastes so sweet.”

Sansa felt the water, bitter and briny, scalding her mouth. She tried to swallow, but there was a lump in her throat.

“Spit it out, Sister.”

Sansa rolled on her stomach and spat on the floor.

What came out of her mouth was a grey-green liquid, a remnant of the sea. It even smelled alkaline, and there were small, muddy pebbles too. 

Sansa wanted to scream. The room was spinning.  _How_ could he have -?

She clenched her fingers around his boot, desperate to make sense of what was in front of her. 

She looked up at him to find that his whites had returned. But they could provide little comfort, seeing as, any moment, they could disappear.

“You ought to clean that up,” he said. “It doesn’t belong here.”

He stepped away from her, careful not to tread on her hair.

Sansa turned on her side, grabbing the fallen handkerchief and soaking up the small pool until the piece of cloth was bathed in sea water. The pebbles remained.

She stayed like that on the floor for a long time, holding the wet handkerchief, waiting for her heart to slow.

Jon was sitting at the table again, drinking from his goblet.

Sansa rose eventually, feeling lethargic and desiccated.

“May I retire, Jon?”

He did not reply, but something in his frame, in the way he held his goblet, indicated that she was free.

Before she closed the door behind her, she swore she heard him say, “sweet dreams”.

 

 

 

And indeed, they were.

For the first time in a long while, she dreamt of nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The handkerchief lay in the fire grate where she had cast it to wither and burn.

But she would wake up in the morning and still find it there, untouched by fire.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your reviews. I hope you liked this chapter. Also, next time we'll be running into some familiar figures who arrive at Winterfell... (and of course, the descent continues)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a small reminder that this story is season 6 AU, and has nothing to do with season 7 and beyond. Thank you so much for reading and reviewing, I'm very glad you're enjoying the darkness.

I have only one thing to do and that's  
Be the wave that I am and then  
Sink back into the ocean

(fiona apple)

 

 

 

She watched the builders descending into the crypts, one by one. The moved as if shackled by an invisible chain that her brother had fashioned. 

What was he doing down there? What need had he to build? Their fathers and their fathers' fathers lay asleep in their tombs, and it would be bad luck to offend them, or worse, wake them. 

She stood guard at her window, forgetting to eat and drink, waiting for something to happen. The problem was, the builders did not come back up, even when the sun set beyond the horizon and the world turned dark.

 

 

She heard the howls at night. The direwolves, a _pack_ of them, even though as she knew there was only one at Winterfell. Yet she heard a thousand growls in the distance, like an army of wolves that had been set loose.

Everyone in the broken castle barred their doors. In the morning, there was always some fresh carrion, be it animal or human, waiting to be buried in the courtyard or outside the gates.  A warning within and without. 

 

 

The few lords who had survived Jon Snow's purge now begged to be released to go home. They promised they would never betray the Starks again. Even more, they promised never to come back to Winterfell. They spat on the Bolton sigil, but nothing seemed to sway her cruel brother. 

"When the Long Night comes, all of you will be useful, my lords," he told them with calm foreboding. But for the words themselves, it almost sounded friendly. 

 

 

Sansa's terror had metamorphosed into a tangle of uncertainties. The brother she knew was gone (though had she ever truly known him?), and the stranger in his place...He was still better than Ramsay because he had not touched her like that - _yet_ \-  

He had made her crawl, but he had been angry on her behalf. She had seen a kind of vengeance in his eyes. 

Maybe he would protect her. But could he protect her from himself? She was not ready to take that chance. 

She needed to get out of Winterfell, soon. 

She called up Theon to her room and made him sit down with her. She even forced a cup of ale to his lips.

"It's all right, it's all right."

He was shaking like a twig. "We can't do it, Sansa. We can't _leave_. He will find us. He has eyes everywhere."

"He has Ghost and the servants who do his bidding, but there are some who are still loyal to me. We might be able to slip out unnoticed."

" _Unnoticed_?" he laughed madly. "My lady, you will always be noticed." 

"I could dye my hair again..." 

Theon stared at the soft locks framing her shoulders, the glint of the fire in them, the auburn of decay. 

"I have a feeling it won't work," he mumbled, staring at his feet.

She issued a nervous laugh. "Nonsense. We must not give into superstition."

 

 

But she had seen her brother's black orbs, with no white in them. That was not superstition.

 

 

She prepared the dye herself with bark paste and cinder and clay. She mixed it all into a bowl until it grew thick and creamy. A color like graveyards. 

She liked the smell of it too, like water thrown over hot coals.

All she required was some linseed oil from the kitchens to make it set. 

She climbed down the servants' stairway in the middle of the night, hoping to remain unseen. 

"How unseemly for Lady Stark to be caught in such quarters..." 

His thick Northern accent has been scraped to the bone, all the vowels corrugated by rust. 

Sansa rose from the floor where she had been kneeling, rifling through the crates under the stove. 

"Good evening, Jon."

His features seemed to melt with the darkness around him. The only light came from the small candlestick she had brought with her. 

"I remember running between the spits with Bran, making the Cook furious when we almost toppled a boiling cauldron."

Sansa's lips cracked a small smile. Could it be that Jon had not forgotten the warmth of family? The bonds that held them together?

"Of course, that was when he could walk," he added derisively. "Now he is fit to be boiled himself."

"Jon..." she trailed off, clutching her fingers. "Theon told me he didn't kill our brothers. They escaped before he could execute them. Rickon and Bran are out there somewhere, I can feel it. We could find them."

He cocked his head to the side and a crooked grin turned his teeth into shards. "They serve Him better beyond the Wall." 

"Who is Him?" she asked warily. 

"Don't fret, Sister. They would only have a worse fate here." 

She shook her head stubbornly. "That's not true. I know you would not kill them."

Jon stepped around the great stone table and ran his finger across its cool surface. "You think _killing_ is the worst a man can bear?"

She shuddered and clenched her fists on the folds of her dress. "No, my lord. I know there's much worse." 

"Then your questions are answered."

She wanted to scream at him in frustration. _You're only giving me strange words and silences!_ But she had a sense of self-preservation. It had been finely tuned at King's Landing.

"I would still like it very much if we could look for them, Jon, _please_."

He laughed the laugh of wood crackling and splintering under a terrible frozen weight. She breathed in that laugh and it made her cold. 

"Are you appealing to my better feelings? You've seen how well that served you."

But he had seen her tormentors in hell, and he had told her they were suffering for their crimes, and that had to mean _something_. 

"I don't think you hate me, Jon." 

He stepped closer to her, his boots not making a single sound on the stone slabs. 

" _Hate_ you? No, that's hardly what I'd call it. Hate is so _little_. The feelings men harbor in their veins, they're like the wind, they come and go. _I'm_ a steady sort."

Sansa tried to decipher his words, but whenever she thought she had alighted upon a meaning, her mind became foggy with the effort. Reason was all that was left, however. If she gave into her instincts and grabbed the nearest blade, it would all be over. 

"I believe it's late, Jon. I should retire," she said, taking a step back.

But she was not fast enough. He grabbed her arm like snatching a bird from mid-air, and he pulled her to him roughly until her back collided with his chest.

Her heart was in her throat. "Jon -" 

His beard was tickling her ear. 

"I know why you want me to find our little brothers, Sansa. You want me to leave Winterfell, so that in my absence you can escape with your Greyjoy pup." 

"That's a lie, my lord -"

"Truth, lie...it's all the same to me. You want to get away, don't you?" Though he was holding her close, there was no warmth in his body. He was bloodless. 

Still, his cold breath was the kind that burned the back of her throat. It singed the hairs at her nape. 

And then she realized, she couldn't hear his heartbeat. The familiar thump of life was mute inside him. 

She strained her ears, trying in vain to find a rhythm, to find a purpose in his body.

The sudden shock that coursed through her veins made her foolishly bold instead of shy.

"You said...you said my brothers serve Him better _beyond_ the Wall. Maybe I will too...maybe if you take me there..."

He laughed again and it felt like teeth sinking into flesh - only they remained there, lodged between her bones. 

"Clever, clever little sister." 

The humor was soon gone from his voice. He gripped her harder to him and spoke slowly into her hair. "You may try to flee, because the ancestors gave you some wildlin' blood with all those Tully graces. But you won't make it far. I'll come for you, wherever you may be. Above or below. I'll come for you. And I'll _find_ you. And I'll cut Theon's guts in front of you. They'll simmer in the snow. Do you understand?"

His lips left a searing trail on the side of her neck, a tongue of ice. 

She nodded wordlessly. Her eyes fluttered shut and she imagined herself a bird, a raven flying South. And she saw him, a great big shadow leaping over the earth, coming to swallow her.

She touched the cold hand that was gripping her waist, but you couldn't tell if she was trying to pry his fingers away or press them closer. 

"Why me?" she asked softly, staring up at the dark ceiling. 

"Can you see the stars, Sansa?" 

She shook her head. "No...we are inside." 

"Look closer. _Really_ look."

"I can't see -"

His fingers yanked her coppery locks until her head was resting on his shoulder. "Open your eyes."

She opened her mouth instead and let the ceiling come to her. Slowly, the world faded. And there they were, clusters and clusters of stars.

A myriad of glimmering sailors on the dark sea. 

She gasped, and the stars shimmered, as if speaking to her. They were so close, yet so far.  She could even feel the night chill, the snow under her boots. 

"How -"

"When the Long Night, comes, my lady, you will be useful." 

 

 

What echoed in her ears as she climbed the stairs frantically to her room was _you're mine, you're mine, you're mine..._

 

 

When she tried to run the paste through her hair, it would not take. She would bring each strand and dip it into the murky paint, but it would not dim the glimmer of the red. Her hair remained untouched.

Because his lips had touched it first. 

 

 

As the cold broke over another winter's day and the clouds parted for a liquid sun, she thought she saw more builders climbing down into the crypts. She thought she heard hammers smashing stone. It could have been true, it could have been another mirage. 

But she was disturbed from such thoughts by a servant knocking at her door.

"A raven for you, m'lady." 

She took the small parchment from the proffered hand. 

Was this another trick? Jon must read all the letters. Which meant he wanted her to see this one.

She unfolded the missive.

 

_My Lady,_

_I am aggrieved to hear of the massacre at Winterfell. I have sent this message by a trusted hand who will deliver it only to you, on pain of death. I march on Winterfell with the full force of the Vale to save you from your bastard brother. Wait for my return._

_Yours evermore,_

_Lord Baelish_

 

Sansa crushed the letter to her fist.

"You poor fool."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you'll soon find out what Jon is doing in the crypts. Also, I lied, no familiar face has arrived at Winterfell yet but...they're on their way, as you can see.


	5. Chapter 5

And the ground gave way beneath my feet  
And the earth took me in her arms  
Leaves covered my face  
Ants marched across my back  
Black sky opened up, blinding me

(madonna)

 

“My lords, we shall have fresh company soon. A chance for a feast.”

The Northern lords cowered under his watchful eye. Jon sat on the dais and bit into a small and gnarled winter apple. It tasted sweet. He let the juice run down his beard.

“My sister has received a love letter. Read it to them, Sansa.”

His sister was sitting at his feet where Theon had brought her. Her long hair almost swept his boots. She was stubbornly staring at the ground, her cheeks as red as her locks. He liked her flustered.

At length, she obliged. She read Littlefinger’s letter in a calm and steady voice, stopping here and there to catch her breath and hide her nerves. She was such a well-practiced doll. Brave in a way many men couldn’t be. She would need this bravery in the coming times.

 “There you have it. _Yours evermore_ ,” Jon quoted with a cold laugh. “Even a husband wouldn’t coo so dearly.”

The other lords laughed uneasily to please him.

“We’ll see if he proves a worthy suitor, won’t we, Sister?”

Sansa clutched the letter in her fingers. “Yes, my lord.”

 

 

Perhaps she might still slip away. When he was too busy killing the armies of the Vale. She might disappear unnoticed.

Perhaps... if the gods were good…

That night, she heard a strange sniffling in the corridor. When she parted her door, she almost shrieked. The wolf’s red eyes stared at her with calculated hostility. No…it was only hunger. He was thirsting for a kill. She shut the door quickly and locked it twice.

 

 

“Why did you have your – Ghost stationed at my door?”

Jon sipped from his ale untroubled. “He won’t bite, if you don’t provoke him.”

“I don’t need a direwolf to guard me.”

“I _do_.”

“You sound like you do not trust me," she remarked bitterly. 

Jon cocked his head and the muscles of his face drew back, as if he was about to snatch a bird from mid-flight. “You're full of wit, my lady. I’ll call on you before I leave for battle. Be ready.”

 _I hope you die with a spear through your throat_ , she thought darkly, though she knew she’d never be that lucky.

 

 

She thought she was dreaming at first, because of late, she had been seeing shifting shadows in the corner of her room right before falling asleep. They looked like the dark petals of some noxious flower that was only waiting to choke her. When she woke up in the morn, it would turn out it was nothing but her scattered brains.  Or so she told herself.

But this time, the petals grew larger and heavier and they carried a gravelly voice.

“What keeps you awake, Sister?”

Sansa thought the question rather cruel, seeing as he was the one tormenting her rest.

“It’s the wind,” she said, hearing the window panes rattling in their frame. It wasn’t a poor excuse. The blizzards were coming more and more regular now. She could see a cold blue light coming through the glass.

Jon took a step towards her bed, his features shifting in the blue light.

 _He looks just like Father_ , she thought for one unguarded moment. But it was not true; it was only a passing feeling. It was the way he wore his hair now and the ascetic cut of his face. There was something perversely ancient about him, as if he had resurrected all the corpses of House Stark and they were swarming under his skin, trying to get out.

No, she’d not make the mistake of confusing him with Father. He had always been warm and loving. Jon was only a terrifying mask.

He regarded her with the twisted semblance of a smile.

 “You’re trembling, my lady.”

“The fire has gone out,” she murmured, staring stonily at the hearth where the kindle was now ashes. What an apt metaphor, she thought.

He came closer, obscuring the blue light. He sat down on the edge of the bed. It was strange; his weight felt both corporeal and intangible. She had a sudden fear that if she stuck out her hand, it would go right through him. 

 “What do you want me to bring you from war?” he asked lightly.

Sansa clutched the quilt to her chest. She was wearing her thick woolen nightgown and a pair of long socks but she still felt disrobed in front of him. 

“Nothing, Jon. I wish you would not war at all.”

“Aye. You wish me to lose.”

Sansa shook her head anxiously. “Of course not…it’s just there’s already been so much death.”

“You mean the death of the man who violated you?” he asked in the same light, almost friendly tone. His eyes coolly surveyed her body under the quilt.

Sansa shuddered. “How can you – _don’t_ speak of him. _His_ death I don’t regret.”

Jon grinned, revealing a row of gleaming white teeth, sharp as an animal’s. She drew back, her head hitting the bedpost.

“I thought you’d say so. Who else do you crave to see dead? Give me the name.”

Sansa clenched her jaw. “N-No one, Jon. I only want us all to live through these dark times.”

“What a lady pretender you are…but you cannot lie to me.”

One of his hands settled without warning on her knee. She had to stifle the reflex to pull away sharply or kick him. He seemed to guess her line of thinking because his grip tightened on her leg.

She tossed her head to the side, hiding the nervous strain in her shoulders. “You said that truths or lies are all the same to you.”

Jon smiled and it gave his face a rueful, boyish quality that made her stumble.

“You haven’t told me what you want me to bring you from war. I’m not leaving until you do.”

Sansa knew that you couldn’t please some men until you told them what they wanted to hear. She had plenty of experience with that.

She cleared her throat. “I’ll leave it to you, my lord. Bring me whatever you think I will desire.”

This seemed to give her brother pause. He cocked his head to the side. His eyes did not blink for a long time.

The hand on her knee moved. Slowly but surely, his fingers started pulling down the quilt. And though a part of her still clutched at it, another part let it go. The panic bubbling in her chest was tempered by a morbid curiosity. She wanted to see what he would do. Would he hurt her? Would he put his violent hand on her? Blows she could survive, but the waiting was torturous. He had been toying with her from the start.  Would he finally act on his bloodlust?

A fresh wave of winter bit at her skin when the quilt was removed entirely. She raised her knees slightly, as if to cradle them to her chest, but he shook his head severely. Sansa stilled in her movements. Her nightgown had ridden up her thighs. He caught a flash of bare skin above her woolen socks.  It looked blue in the strange blizzard light.

His coarse knuckles traced the outline of her thigh and she shivered violently. The exposed flesh was raised in goose bumps.

“I think I have an idea of what you might desire,” he spoke slowly, his voice like the whisper of a blade against skin.

His fingers ghosted at the hem of her socks, parting her knees like water. He slipped his hand along the inside of her thigh. Sansa inhaled sharply. He was cold and she was warm. She did not know why she was not fighting him. Her heart beat painfully in her chest.

Her thighs clapped shut around his wrist. The chill of his skin melted against hers. Sansa felt faint. Her brother had his hand between her legs. This was not the violence she had imagined. And yet, why did it suddenly seem so inevitable?

“He’s got a silver tongue, doesn’t he?” he said, as his hand strokes the inside of her thigh. His eyes had become two pools of brackish water and she felt she was drowning by degrees, each limb sinking into them.

His fingers dipped underneath her socks and caressed the heated skin there, and it almost felt soothing. But no, it did not. Because a tension was coiling in her stomach, pulling at the seams.

“Who?” she asked, aware that her voice sounded like a stranger’s voice. Almost not hers.

His hand abandoned her socks and reached down, brushing her smallclothes from his inexorable path.

“The mockingbird who sold you,” he rasped and brushed his thumb against her clit.

Sansa’s body jerked away, but against her will, her hips rose to meet him. She had to clutch the furs around her to stop her movements.

His thumb stroked the length of her cunt, pausing in a calculated fashion to rub circles around her small nub.

Sansa’s eyelids fluttered shut. No one had touched her like that before. Ramsay had simply driven into her without mercy and then left her bleeding. And the princes in her dreams had only ever kissed her reverently on her lips. Shae had told her in passing about a second pair of lips a woman possessed but Sansa had discarded it as folly.  A true lady never thought about her body for too long.

 She felt this was an otherworldly intrusion, for surely, mortal men could not do this. To invoke these sensations only with his fingers…it was unseemly.

“What if I cut it out?” he asked in the voice of her brother, but the grunt of a beast.

Sansa threw her head back, trying to contain the tension in her stomach, trying not to let it spill out shamefully. The blue light surrounded her. She felt warm, _too_ warm, she ached for ice. Her chest rose and fell precipitately. Her whole body seemed to undulate, rising from the bed like a ghost.

She gasped and opened her eyes when his finger parted her wet folds and slowly penetrated her. He only probed her with the tip of his thumb, a light temptation. It was enough to drive a desperate moan from her lips. His eyes – it was disturbing how they had once seemed _innocent_ –now reflected a dark possessive lust.

“What if I cut out his tongue and brought it to you?” he continued, teasing her entrance with his thumb while his forefinger stroked her clit. Sansa felt she was losing her mind. She was becoming as loose as the whores in Winter Town. She couldn’t stop staring into his eyes.

“Would you like that, Sansa?” and his thick voice rumbled in her ears.

His rhythm intensified painfully, slipping in and out of her, his fingers caressing her expertly, making her want to cry out.

“Would you like that?” he repeated sternly.

“Y-Yes. Yes. _Please_.”

“Again,” he demanded hungrily, as her thighs moved erratically against his hand.

“Yes. Yes!  _Jon_ , yes.”

"Say it. _Say_   what you would like."

"I would like..." she struggled with her words as the pleasure became almost as intolerable as pain. "I would like...for you to..."

"Yes?"

Tears ran down her cheeks, she couldn't bear it anymore. "Cut out....his...tongue."

He was satisfied.

She closed her eyes against the wave when it came for her. She disintegrated into irrelevant pieces. She was no longer Lady Stark of Winterfell, the daughter of Ned Stark…she was no longer simply female, or simply alive. She rose up towards the ceiling and saw the stars, and this time she believed in them.

When she crashed down on the bed, she felt boneless. Exhausted beyond belief.

Jon slowly removed his hand from her sticky thighs. He brought the fingers to his mouth and licked them clean, his face a stony mask.

Sansa’s body started shaking at the sight.  Jon pulled back the quilt over her body and rose from the bed.

She wanted to say something, to deny her words and his, to ask him why he would do this – ( _how does it taste_?) - but her throat was filled up with a dark, warm liquid, and her mind was askance. Was he really here or would he disappear if she put her hand through him?

Her brother smiled sinisterly in the blue light. “Wait for my return.”

She couldn’t stay awake anymore. She fell into a deep and troubled sleep where fingers parted her knees.

 

 

In a moment of belated consciousness, he realized he had recited from Littlefinger’s letter. _Wait for my return._

 

 

She woke late the next day, the sun having already been swallowed up by afternoon clouds. She dragged her feet to the window. She had expected to see empty courtyards, for surely Jon would take the lords’ retinue into battle. But below, the daily activities were going on as usual.

Ghost was not at her door when she opened it. But she could smell him. He had just left.

 

 

When she arrived in the Great Hall, she noticed only a handful of men were missing, and the absence was not remarkable. Her many months spent in Ramsay’s captivity had familiarized her with their faces, for she had to guess which ones would hit her and which ones would be kind. Only she could tell how many were gone. 

What did Jon have in mind with so few men? She knew he was a savage killer, but the Vale possessed one of the largest armies in Westeros. Even he could not...

She shuddered and came to a stop next to her chair when she remembered the night’s events. They descended on her like a sudden impenetrable fog. Had it all been a cruel nightmare? Had her brother touched her? Had she let him-

Theon appeared at her side and pulled back her chair, inviting her to sit.

 “You look ill, my lady. You need refreshments,” he said in a small voice.

“Yes, but not here. I need fresh _air_ ,” she mumbled and rose abruptly, compelling him to follow.

 

 

They walked sedately towards the godswood, the snow creaking under their feet. Sansa thought she saw a distinct white shape in the drifts. She turned her head sharply, but each time she did so, the beast seemed to disappear. Why was the direwolf playing games? She knew she was being watched.

Theon rubbed his gloved hands together. “Every day it’s getting colder.”

Sansa nodded absently. “Has he been gone for long?”

Theon frowned. “Gone…? Not quite. But no one’s seen him in a few hours.”

It was Sansa’s turn to frown. “But didn’t he leave for battle with his men?”

Theon shook his head. “If he did…it wasn’t through the gates. They’re all locked and chained.”

“…surely you just didn’t see them.”

Theon was stubbornly denying it. “I was up with the crows, my lady, and I saw nothing of the sort. You can ask the sentries if you don’t believe me.”

Sansa closed her eyes and breathed softly through her parted lips. The air hurt her lungs. “The gods have mercy. He must be playing some horrible trick.”

Theon flinched, a tremor seizing his limbs. “Please, my lady. Let’s not talk of it. He…has ears everywhere.”

She saw the outline of Ghost from the corner of her eye, but it disappeared in the snow again. A fleeting warning, a fleeting temptation.

She clenched her fists under her cloak.

_Jon, what do you intend to do?_

And the answer came from the mist. _What if I cut out his tongue and brought it to you? Would you like that, Sansa?_

 _Yes, I said yes_ , she thought and she knelt down and buried her face in the fresh snow. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for your kudos and comments. i hope you enjoyed this chapter and umm, yes, there will be some carnage next time. we'll also talk about the crypts too and how jon is using them.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big warning that there's lots of blood and gore in this chapter. umm, yeah, that's all i can say about it. thank you for reviewing and reading, I hope you have the stomach for what comes next!

 

The world above and below belonged to him. What crawled beneath the earth was no stranger to him anymore. He could hear their claws and teeth, scraping, churning, digging, grinding…boiling in their own juice. He was sympathetic to their hunger. He wanted to feed them, because all things kept hidden deserve to be let out.

Below the crypts, there was so much life.

The lower levels had caved in, but he set the men he’d taken from each House to dig and break the rocks until they cleared the path to the underground tunnels. The ones everyone had forgotten about. The ones even Old Nan had left in the mist.

Before the Wardens of the North and before the Kings of Old, someone had built these passages and had done an unnatural thing. They covered the length of Winterfell and spanned in two opposite directions: North, into the heart of winter, and South, into the land without heart.

The sheer size of the tunnels was enough to make one wonder. They were not built for men. They were not built for their horses and carts and wagons. You could plant a holdfast in the center and you’d still not scrape the ceiling.

 There was a smell too, which the men noticed as their digging advanced. It was decay and pitch and tar and shit…

They started talking, whispering to each other about what could be down there if you reached deep enough.

What would you encounter, if you ventured so far that you could not find your way back anymore? How many people had done this very thing and died in obscurity?  

They ate and slept among these ruins and did not see the sun for days.

Jon told them one evening – although they could not be sure it was night or day – that they ought to lie down and rest longer, for their journey would begin very soon.

“And your eyes will not close again.”

It was in that moment that true and innocent fear sank its talons into their flesh. Before, they had followed orders under duress, but they had at least known they were merely toiling under Winterfell’s vaults. Now, Lord Snow was telling them to abandon this meager familiarity and launch into the unknown.

Some of them tried to slash their throats or hang themselves, but Jon was never far. He could smell despair. He untangled their desire for death and wound the reins around his fists.

There was no turning back for them. The dark body of the tunnel, an endless gaping black mouth, was calling to them.

 

 

The Knights of the Vale rode with caution, not trusting the clean white of snow.  There was snow to be had in the Eyrie too, but it was not so uniform, not so lacking in other shades. There was no blue or green or brown here. The elements were robbed of pulse. Nature was catatonic. It was like snowing ash.

The army was five days away from Winterfell, _if_ the weather stood still and the clouds did not break the skies. With any luck, it would snow less tomorrow and they might advance a few hours more. The men were growing exhausted and the food stores would see them through this journey only if they met no resistance further down the line.  

Certainly, Lord Baelish was optimistic. He seemed to think nothing could stop them. His general ease and unctuous smiles left his commanders baffled. They could not guess that Littlefinger grinned so much because this had been an old childhood dream. To take Winterfell from the Starks with an army at his back and marry his beloved Cat. Despite all his clever machinations, the man was simple at his core. He craved nothing more than the vainglory of old heroes, the romance of fairytales. He wished to seize the princess and defeat the dragon.

The dragon, however, was more than just a beast. He was a specter that always returned for what was his.

 

 

The men’s teeth clattered, but it was not the cold that made them shiver. The tunnels were strangely warm, as if the air was filled with kindling. They had walked far enough to leave Winterfell and its hot springs behind.

Lord Snow walked before them, but he seemed to have eyes in the back of his head, for they could not twitch or grimace without his knowledge.

All they could do was follow him and hope they were useful enough to keep alive.

Yet, the more they saw of these tunnels, the more they hankered for the sweet release of death. It was slowly eating away at them, the oppressive darkness which could only be abated with candle wicks. Lord Snow did not allow a stronger light. Indeed, he did not need one to guide him forward.

But the men were slowly losing their sight. They could hardly distinguish their own faces anymore. Their hearing too was suffering some alteration. Before, there was only the eerie silence of unlived relics, but now they could hear scattered whispers, like the rasps of an old crone, pouring into their ears from the slits and chinks in the tunnels. They could also hear the slithering of creatures on the walls, but when they shed light on them, they could only see packed earth and stone. The sight of rats and worms and roaches would have actually heartened them. To see a living thing crawling before you was proof of survival. Instead, it was only an inkling of _something_ , but it always escaped their grasp.

Their terror was so great that Jon’s words came true; they could not close their eyes. Though they saw little and understood even less, they felt it was better to face the horror with eyes open wide. Their one certainty was that they were walking south, but even that was being stretched thin. They could not remember how long ago they had started on this journey, nor if they were making progress or standing still.

What _is_ real when you are buried underground? The above or the below? It’s a strange conundrum. Your above is still someone’s below. And your below…well, any lower than that, and there wouldn’t even be a question anymore.

 

 

Jon listened to the ordered march of the Vale Knights above. Their horses’ hooves beat a laconic rhythm. The men’s boots shuffled wearily in the snow. It was a timid exploration of his land. These men were not made for frozen things. You were not mean to drag your feet through snow. You were meant to run into it, with your mouth open.

He knew they were coming close. The moment of collision would be sweet. He licked his lips and felt the sharpness of his canines, proof of his appetite.

 

 

Lord Snow’s men did not notice, at first, that the darkness was receding. They had grown used to its solid nature, like a heavy cloak that keeps you, if not warm, at least sheltered.  They got the sense that any strong light would shake the whole structure and make it collapse on top of them.

They almost begged Lord Snow to save them from the light. If this was a possibility of freedom, they did not want it.

Jon only smiled. So it was with men always. Their greatest weakness was that they grew used to things.

The light was not coming from the end of the tunnel. It was coming from a small opening above. It was a strange diffuse light, as if someone was holding it in their fist, and it was pouring through their grimy fingers.

Jon looked up and bathed his eyes.

“It’s time to fight for your lives.”

 

 

The army of the Vale had set up camp on the rise of a hill which gave them a bird’s eye view of the bleak winter plains below. No enemy retinue could descend on them without their knowledge. There were sentries everywhere, even in the scant trees, watching for any movements from the North. But they did not come from the North.

 

 

Much later, the few survivors would say that the men rose from the earth itself. They came out of the frozen snow as if passing through a veil.

They were only a handful, yet because they came out of nowhere, they seemed to multiply before their eyes.

In the confusion and the turmoil, many Vale men fell without even realizing.

Most of the soldiers were sleeping when it happened. They died in their dreams.

 

 

Jon rose from the earth in the middle of the camp. The tents flapped in the wind, crying out for mercy. The sky-blue falcon of House Arryn wanted to fly away, but it could only watch silently.

Jon spread his men in all four directions. He told them, “give me corpses, and you will walk above ground.”

They encircled the camp, like a necklace around a woman’s throat.

 

 

Lord Baelish was his, however.  No one was supposed to touch the mockingbird.

 

 

Jon washed his face in the snow, filling it with ravines of blood.

Five of his men had fallen, but the rest were still standing, wielding their swords desperately, blinking their eyes at the light like newborns. Some still thought they were in the tunnels below, and were only fighting demons in their dreams. This made them better in combat, for who suppresses their instincts in dreams?

 “Drag the corpses to the hole in the ground,” he ordered them when there was little else left to kill. Survivors had fled. Others would freeze and perish and have their eyes pecked out by crows.

“What for, my lord?” one of them asked, blinking fast.

“I want all of them to lie in the tunnels below.”

All, except for Littlefinger.

 

 

The stench of the tunnels carried in every direction, announcing the fresh carrion.

 

 

She heard the men shout on the parapet.

“The Eastern Gate! Open the Eastern Gate!”

Sansa rushed to the window. Jon had returned, though she had never seen him leave.

 

 

“I am glad…to see you home again,” she said to her brother, but she was staring at her former ally, the elegant man now sunk below his station, bruised and battered, his pretty cloak torn from his shoulders.

“S-Sansa…darling child,” Petyr whispered hoarsely, trying to lift his eyes to her.

 “I told you to wait for my return,” Jon said, hitting him in the side of the stomach hard, making him roll on the steps like a rag doll.

“I did,” she stammered.  “I knew you would be victorious.” _But I prayed otherwise._

“Ghost tells me you had your doubts,” he spoke, staring at his faithful animal, sleeping by the doors. Or only appearing to sleep, she thought.

Her jaw locked. “Your…wolf followed me everywhere.”

“This bothered you, my lady?”

“It showed you don’t trust me,” she muttered, fighting the instinct to stare at Petyr’s whimpering figure. He was trying and failing to rise as Jon kicked him repeatedly for his efforts.

Her brother smiled a thin smile. “Do you want to earn my trust?”

_No_. “I can try.”

He nodded. “Kneel, Sister.”

She blinked. “What?”

 “Kneel before me.”

She looked around her at the Great Hall. It was empty, except for the three of them. No witnesses. She complied.

The stone felt unnaturally warm under her knees, as if the old spring waters still ran underneath.

“Hold out your hands.”

She did as she was told and she was surprised to find her hands were not shaking. An imponderable sense of fate had descended on her like a cloak. A sense that all things converged here, in this position of submission.

But it was…not quite submission. It was an acceptance that they had left the realm of ranks and order, that they were traveling to the bloody, violent center of things. After all, her old mentor was begging for his life.

 “Sansa, please, I loved your mother…I loved you…” Petyr cried.

 Jon pried his jaws open with brutal force and pulled out his tongue, like snatching the serpent from the grass.

She wanted to say, _wait, give him a fair trial_ , but the words sounded hollow in her ears.

Sansa was sprayed with the flecks of blood as the tongue came off in one sharp slice.

Petyr Baelish collapsed like an insensible block at her feet, moaning and crying and spitting blood.

Jon stepped forward with his trophy and held it aloft, staring down at his sister.

“Look at me.”

He lowered the tongue to her forehead and let it drip fresh blood on her temples. He moved it slowly down, baptizing her in the warm river, letting it fall across her nose and cheeks, staining her lips and chin until she could taste it. Sansa forced herself to stand still and not swallow. 

She was a statue in the middle of a blood-fall.

She kept her eyes on him, even though it was getting difficult to see, even if she was caked in blood.

Something inside her responded to this ugly carnage. It was the rituality of it that reminded her of her prayers, of her childhood faith, of her belief in retribution, in the Gods’ watchful eye. She felt sick to her stomach, but she pushed down the bile, because she was witnessing something sacred. She was being anointed, and though she did not know the final purpose, she knew that she must observe the ceremony.

Littlefinger’s tongue dropped into her open hands. It was wormy and slippery and soft. It felt like a living thing, struggling to die.

“As promised,” Jon said, his voice like gravel, his eyes admiring his work. “The tongue is yours.”

He almost gazed at his sister with affection.  The kind of affection that ravenous wolves bestow on the small birds in the sky, the ones they cannot reach with their fangs, the ones they dream about.

But the fondness was glacial, and it demanded ice from her too.

“Thank you,” she said, as calmly as she could manage it. In the process, she licked her lips and Petyr’s blood spread on her tongue like fire.

Jon nodded in satisfaction, and for a moment, his eyes seemed to be missing, replaced instead by two black holes.

But it was only a strange fancy.

Before she could flinch, he buried his blade in Littlefinger’s prostrate head, silencing his cries forever.

 

 

Jon descended into the crypts to the melody of his children snapping their jaws.

He dropped into the tunnels below. You could still smell the stench of corpses, although his creatures had eaten everything, had not even left skeletons. There was no trace of Vale men. 

Jon knelt down and touched the ground with his palms. He sank his nails into the earth until it bit into his flesh. 

“I gave you fresh blood. Now come to me with your fire.”

He heard the wyrms clacking their teeth in unison, saying to him, _yesss, masterrr._

Even Old Nan could not have told a better story to scare the children.

The fire wyrms crawled through the tunnels, still half in slumber, their scales glowing amber. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you might be thinking, hey fire wyrms were found in Old Valyria, in the mines of the Fourteen Fires. Well, add Jon's Targaryen blood into the mix, the fact that these creatures are the predecessors of dragons and what *really* warms Winterfell's hot springs (tinfoil!) and maybe you can put up with me and this weird plot. also, ice wyrms? also a very possible thing. stay tuned! (also i think some of you may have already mentioned the tunnels in the comments, so kudos!)
> 
> p.s. just a reminder, sansa "asking" for petyr's tongue happened last chapter through some...less than orthodox means, let's say.


	7. Chapter 7

  
He had one of the servants embalm the tongue for her and stash it in a wooden crate. She hid the crate under the bed, but it reached out through the mattress and licked her skin while she slept.

She could hear it whisper.  _She could_ _smell_ _it too._ Though it was well-preserved, the tongue gave off a sweet stench, like fruit that had gone stale.

 _"Remember what I taught you..."_  it hissed softly as she twisted between the furs. _"You know what you have to do...."_

Sansa screwed her eyes shut. "No, I don't." 

 

 

Theon tried to keep his mouth shut while he ate. It was comical to watch him chew. When he spoke, he only murmured sounds between his lips, never letting his jaw fall open.

He was afraid that Jon might have a thirst for cutting off more tongues. 

 

 

Though the weather was growing steadily worse, Winterfell was getting warmer. The servants lit fires, but Sansa felt like disrobing. She could see the lords in the Great Hall sweating under their furs. It wasn't just fear that was turning their cheeks red. The castle was like a pot on a simmering fire.  She did not know if this was Jon's fault. The hot springs she’d loved as a child were not as strong as they used to be. Nothing grew anymore in the glass garden.

Yet, heat was coming through the cracks.

She thought of Petyr's tongue. She thought about the Vale Army which had disappeared into the mist. Jon wouldn’t tell her what he’d done with them, but she had heard rumors. Corpses are meant to be cold, but perhaps these were warm and stoking the warmth into her own veins.

 

 

Sansa combed her hair in front of the cracked mirror. Every time she ran the brush through her red locks, it looked like someone was hitting two stones to start a fire. But other times, it looked like the embers were turning to cinders. 

Two snakes, one grey, one crimson, gliding through her hair. 

But _were_ they snakes?

If she squinted, they looked more like fat worms.

She set the brush down and stared at her hands for a long time. When she was a child, she’d pinch the skin of her palm and wonder at the elasticity, the softness. Now, the membrane was stretched tight, showing throbbing veins and bones. Crone hands.  Her mother’s hands in death.

_Mother._

She missed Catelyn so much. If only she were here to tell her what to do. She wanted her steady hand on her shoulder, carding through her hair, telling her to stop being silly, that everything would turn out all right in the end because mothers and sisters and daughters always survived, while men played and warred and destroyed each other.

When she looked up, she saw Cersei Lannister staring back from the mirror. She gasped. The queen’s beautiful face was a crater of hatred. 

"Tears aren't a woman's only weapon.”

Sansa stumbled away from the mirror, but the words followed her.

“The best one’s between your legs. Learn how to use it.”

 

 

The thin film that separated fantasy from reality was dissolving before her eyes. She was hearing voices, seeing enemies, dreaming of forbidden things.

And Petyr’s tongue kept pouring sins into her ear.

_“Charm him. Entrance him. Bewitch him…”_

It sounded like a dance, a childhood dance, running in circles around a burning effigy…laughing with your hands in the air, reaching the stars with your fingertips…. _charm, entrance, bewitch_ … liquors and potions, things to throw in the cauldron to boil. 

“He’s my – my brother,” she whispered in her cradled hands, like guarding a candle from the wind.

 _“So what?”_ Cersei snarled in her other ear. _“Only brothers can love us truly. Blood of our blood.”_

“Stop.”

 _“You let him touch you…and you liked it,”_ Petyr seethed, making her hair rise on her arm.

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t!” 

 _“The first time Jaime put his finger inside me I was not sixteen. You are not much older, little dove,”_ Cersei cackled, her wine-breath on her cheek.

 _“Catelyn and Lysa kissed me …they kissed each other, brothers and sisters we were…naked in one bed…”_ Petyr spoke against her lips and Sansa had to hold her breath to keep him out.

 “I can’t. I can’t do this.”

 _“Yesss, you can,”_ they both hissed like serpents in her hair, like worms trailing at her feet.

 

 

Sansa stood before the solar door like a prisoner sentenced to the block. There was a quelling in her stomach telling her to turn back, but the same lethal fear pushed her forward. She had nothing to lose, and even less to gain. 

She knocked twice.

“Come in.”

Jon was sitting behind a writing desk, bent over a large tome whose pages were yellowed and stuck together with age. It looked like a book that only Maester Luwin might have known about.

“What are you reading?” she asked without preamble. “Is it a history?”

Jon did not look up from his task. “Merely a ledger with names and figures.”

“That sounds rather dull,” she said, hands smoothing the folds of her dress. She had taken care with her apparel this evening. She hoped he would notice. She took a few steps towards the window, beckoning him to look up.

But he didn’t. He kept staring at his ledger.

Sansa wondered if he knew what she was doing, if he’d already guessed her foolish ploy and was secretly laughing at her. She felt her cheeks grow hot and she hid her face in the nook of her shoulder. This was a terrible idea. It was not even an _idea_ , more like a desperate grasp at straws.

“Come here, Sister. I need your eyes.”

His voice made her start. It was not his usual cynical drawl. It sounded plain and amiable. An innocent invitation.

It was just the word that gave her pause _…Sister_. _That’s what you are. That’s what you should be._

He was holding the ledger towards her, his finger pointing to an ink-stained corner. She walked to the desk and leaned forward, a few strands of hair slipping from her braid.

“It says…” she squinted. The writing was neat, but it had been washed away by time and it was hard to distinguish the author’s meaning.  “…Five stacks of grains, I think.”

When she looked up to confirm it, she found him staring at her. He seemed unconcerned with the information. Had not even paid attention. 

Though his face was sober, there was a hint of scorn around the lips, a smirk that would not show itself.

Sansa frowned, but did not shy away.  She would tolerate his mockery if it got her what she wanted. She raised her hand and placed it next to his on the ledger. “Is that right, Jon?”

His fingers drummed against the leaf. “Why are you here?”

She had expected the question, but not quite like this.

“I believe I can see my brother when I wish.”  

“You tend to avoid my presence, if you can,” he pointed out without malignant cause. Simply stating the truth. But the truth, Littlefinger had taught her, was as malleable as dough. It just took a bit of coaxing.

 “I don’t _avoid_ you. You just never give me the chance to come to you.”

 _You always come to me,_ her eyes signaled as she blinked slowly, letting him absorb her expression. She had nothing to hide...

Jon’s eyes shifted from grey to tar as he surveyed her. He was curious, though not unguarded. 

 “What is on your mind, Sister?”

Sansa pulled a lock of hair behind her ear. “I’m worried for you.”

“For me?”

“You are proving to be a very apt leader, but I wonder if you know where you are going.”

Jon cocked his head to the side. “Do I seem lost, my lady?”

Sansa swallowed thickly. “No…but you are searching for something, it’s plain to see.”

Jon ran his tongue over his teeth. “The Lady of Winterfell is observant. She watches me as I watch her.”

“You’d best not call me that anymore, since I have no influence here –”

 “Is _that_ what troubles you? Your lack of power?”

Sansa shook her head. “Power is so transitory, don’t you think?”

Jon smiled coldly, appraising her with renewed interest. “Is that a threat?”

She smiled back coyly, as if nothing so vulgar could cross her mind. “A reminder.”

“Of what precisely?”

Sansa circled his desk slowly, guiding herself by her hand. She did not trust her trembling feet.

She stopped by his side, her dress brushing against his knees. Jon’s chest did not rise or fall with breath. His face was stony, his eyes a dark flame. He stood very still, watching her.

Sansa knew the next step was crucial, able to undo all her prospects. If she faltered now, she might never summon the courage again.

She lowered herself on his lap slowly, as if diving into a gaping mouth. She straddled one of his legs and placed one hand on his shoulder for support. “You don’t have to do this alone.”  

Jon did not blink. He did not stir. He allowed her to sit. She could feel the tension in his muscles, the unyielding nature of his body. He was not welcoming her, but he was not chasing her away.

Sansa took this in faith and continued valiantly. “Let me help you, Jon. With whatever you need.”

The silence was deafening. The contact between them made her skin itch and her heart beat very fast. If he should lean forward -

 “Why would you offer this to me?” he asked instead.

_Because you offered me his tongue, because you had your finger inside me, because you made me feel good and horrible and I hate you for it._

“You are my brother and my true knight. You killed Ramsay and Petyr for me. You – you set me free.”

Such pretty lies, coated in truth.

“Your true knight,” he echoed with disdain, though she noticed, imperceptibly, that his body was closing in on her, surrounding her on all sides. He had not moved an inch…and yet, she felt crowded, as if there was no way out.

“I thought you’d given up on true knights,” he said, taking the end of her braid in hand and twisting the locks.

Sansa watched his fingers with rapt attention. “I find that only the fortunate can afford to give up fantasy.”

“Truly?” he asked, tugging lightly on her hair.

 Sansa’s hand moved from his shoulder to his tunic, fingering brass buttons. “Fantasy kept me alive. I dreamed of something better and it made reality easier to bear.”

“Has your dream come true, Sister?” he teased with a raised eyebrow.

Sansa’s fingers curled around the leather. “Has _yours_?”

The question caught him unawares. Sansa inhaled sharply. It was now or never.

“When we were children…you must have wanted this.”

His eyes widened for a fraction. It would have been imperceptible to anyone else, but the man behind the monster recoiled, as if struck.

“Didn’t you?” she added, squirming against his lap.

She was treading into dark territory, terrified it might be a lie, terrified it might be _true_.

She was profaning the world of innocence she once knew, but perhaps it had never been innocent. 

Jon’s breath came in short gulps. There were fissures in his mask now.

 _Gods forgive us_ , she prayed.

Sansa leaned down until her cheek almost brushed his. She could smell the snow in his name, the nearness of a precipice. She was about to fall over. She whispered in his ear, the way she had been taught. “What did you want to do to me, Jon?”

There was a kind of painful spasm. She felt it in her own body. His reaction was unmistakable. Like poison ingested, like death swallowed whole.

He transformed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I am evil. Next chapter will be a hard E. Thank you for your support!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter warnings: some serious dub-con in the beginning, and Dark!Jon.

_What did you want to do to me, Jon?_

The dark of his pupil swallowed the iris.

 

 

Sansa had a moment’s breath to regret her words. Only a heartbeat, really, to realize she may not be ready.

But it was too late. She had unleashed him.

Jon slammed her lithe body against the worktable, flinging aside parchments and ledgers.

Her spine issued a soft crack against the wood. Delicious.

Her tresses fell in a crimson shower around her.

One look at his barbarous, stormy eyes and her breath stopped short in her throat. Not man, not wildling, not dead - but something in between. 

“You shouldn’t have said that,” he murmured almost gently, staring down at his sister. 

He ripped her fine dress with his own fingers. He shred it from throat to waist, making small work of her petticoats. When Sansa rose to look down at herself, he pushed her back hard, one rough hand on her chest. He could feel her stuttered heartbeat.

Jon smiled the smile of the dead. His touch was cold as ice and, as he pressed down on her chest, she suddenly felt her pulse slackening, as if he was gripping her very heart, commanding its rhythm.

Sansa felt a deep, painful tension in her belly.

Jon cupped one of her breasts in his hand, kneading the flesh, stroking it back and forth, rolling her nipple against his thumb. She couldn’t help arching her back into his hand, yet her heart kept the same steady, sedate beat, even as her body thrummed with energy.

She could have never imagined such a _torture_. To be forced into tranquility while being turned inside out.

He pinched her nipple, released it, and pinched it again. Every time, her heart refused to move. She could not take this.

He grinned down at her.

“This is just the beginning.”

He gripped her bare hips and pulled them to him, sinking his fingers into the flesh, leaving half-moon indentations on her skin.  

He reached down and rudely probed her cunt, running his fingers over the soft, damp curls. He parted the lips.

Sansa wanted to flinch, but his hold on her heart was keeping her anchored. She was growing wet for him, but she was not yet prepared to take him. He did not care. He would not coax her with fingers like before. He would do much worse.

He flipped her over roughly, on her belly.

Her chin hit against hard wood and she almost bit her tongue.

He sank his fingers in her hair and kept her head down. Sansa issued soft moans of pain. Her breasts were crushed against the table. Her heart was _horribly_ serene. She felt split from her body, aching to get back inside herself.

Jon spread her legs further and inserted two fingers in her cunt. He curled his digits, hooking them against her entrance, as if opening her up. Sansa felt the cold chill of winter between her thighs. She did not hear him untie his breeches. The world was in complete silence for a few dreadful moments, until he entered her swiftly, cruelly, in one burning motion.

His length was enough to make her eyes swim.

Her brother was inside her. Her _brother_.

His cock was tearing at her insides, installing him, marking her forever as his whore. At least Ramsay had married her before he had done this.

Jon started moving inside her, slowly at first, punctuating each thrust with his fingers against her scalp.

Sansa felt crushed and heavy and light and terrible, all at once. She was – she was fucking her brother, or rather he was fucking her.

And she could feel _everything_ , yet her heart was caged by him. Every sensation was like fire that was not allowed to be stoked. She gritted her teeth as his thrusts increased, as his rhythm grew more erratic.

Sansa held onto the table.

“This is what I wanted to do to you, sweet sister,” he murmured darkly, and his voice had a cavernous echo. “When we were children.”

Sansa felt bile rise up in her throat, yet her cunt was growing wetter and wetter and she couldn’t deny what he was doing to her.

“You were so pretty and gentle, such a proper little lady,” he intoned, his hips canting against hers, the sound unorthodox and intoxicating. His fingers dug at the base of her skull, pressing down on the slant of her spine, coming to rest on the small of her back. 

He hit the same spot inside her, again and again, until her vision started blurring. She wasn’t even aware of the sounds she was making.

The only thing she knew was that she wanted to tear her heart out from her chest.

“You never got this fair skin dirty,” he chuckled, continuing his assault, slowing down his thrusts, plunging deeper than before. “You’d have rather died.”

Sansa moaned loudly, but it sounded more like a croak. She couldn’t get her lungs to swell, she couldn’t get her throat to scream. He was holding her heart hostage, squeezing the muscle, keeping it afloat as he fucked her mercilessly.

His cock teased her entrance, slipping in and out of her, and the sounds of her sopping cunt against his head made her want to cry.  

She had never felt this before, this building tension. Ramsay had always been a quick and awful brute, spilling inside her within seconds.

“I wanted to fuck you in the Sept, before your mother’s cold eyes,” Jon continued in the same echoing voice which was creeping down her flesh. “Catelyn would have heard you say my name over and over, would have seen your maiden blood on my cock…”

Sansa felt hot tears run down her cheeks. She wanted release. She wanted him to untie her heart strings.

“Uhh…Yes…oh Gods,  _yes_ …” she whispered hoarsely, horrified with herself.

“I wanted to bury myself inside you until you were almost on the brink, until you begged me, until I filled you up with bastard seed…”

Sansa could almost choke on it, could almost taste it. So she begged him, because her insides were wasting and she had no way out of this.

“Please, _please_ , Jon, I can’t –uh-uh—uh – _please_...”

“Please what?” he answered, his voice growing harder and hotter in her ear. 

“Please – oh Gods – _ooohh_ , please fill me –fill me with…with...” but she couldn’t even finish it, she couldn’t speak anymore.

“No,” he answered with a spiteful laugh in his voice. “Not _yet_.”

And he unleashed her heart.

At once, she felt the ice of his fingers melt from her chest, and her pulse accelerated in seconds, catching up to her ravished state.

Sansa keened. She screamed. She slammed her head against the table. Her heart beat like a freed bird and her orgasm unfurled its wings. She squeezed his cock, her cunt throbbing with release, but she needed _more_. Jon slipped out of her and she felt a cold, clear liquid spill down her thighs. His fingers rubbed at her small nub with precision, making her gush out again, emptying the river inside her.

“ _Aaah! F-fuck!_ ” She had never heard that word on her lips before. It had never been torn from her in such a way.

But she didn't care. She wanted to be depleted of every last drop. She gushed again and again as Jon stroked her nub with the heel of his palm.

" _Fuck...fuck... fuck..._ " she murmured, almost like a prayer now, like a holy word. The dam was broken. She wondered if it was the Tully fish in her veins. She wondered if this was what everyone felt, or if she was going _insane_.

Jon growled like a wolf at the sight of her irreverent baptism. He wanted to spend her again and again. He'd brought her so far; how much lower would she descend? The human pulse of the world no longer interested him, but her pulse  _did_. He licked her cum from his fingers and pumped his cock once, twice, before releasing himself on the small of her back. 

She felt his hot, sticky seed spray the tips of her hair.  

She pressed her lips against the cold wood.

They were both obscene.

 

 

He fell back into his father’s chair, dragging his sister with him, pulling her against his chest. They were both covered in each other’s filth, panting like wild animals.

She rested her head against his shoulder, chest rising and falling without measure. Her breasts shone with sweat and cum. She would never find peace again.

He held one possessive hand around her waist and spoke into her throat.

“Next time, do not bother dressing prettily.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that was worth the wait! Thank you for your kudos and comments!


	9. Chapter 9

And there's no coming back from the place that you came

 

 

"Do you hear him, the heathen?" he whispered in her ear. 

Sansa reclined her head on Jon's shoulder and thought about Cersei lying in a similar state in her brother's embrace. Maybe the Queen would be proud to see her now.

But she knew, instinctively, that Ser Jaime treated his sister with reverence during the act. She could picture them locked in a violent dance, but Cersei always led the way. It would only be at her request that Jaime took the reins.

Jon had no such qualms. 

"Hm?" she asked, distracted.

Jon's fingers stroked her damp skin without a hint of caress. He pinched the flesh awake, palming and weighing each breast, rolling one nipple between thumb and forefinger until she hissed. He smeared the remnants of cum along her collarbone, gifting her a necklace. Sansa wanted to remove his hands, but she would be cold without him.

"He's at the door, cowering," Jon intimated with a scornful laugh.

Sansa cast her eyes towards the solar’s entrance. She tensed in Jon's arms. She'd forgotten about the rest of the world, about Winterfell. For a moment there, she’d doubted she was still alive. 

"Come in, Theon," Jon called out with perfect self-possession. 

Sansa's body jerked away from him, but Jon pinned her back in his arms and his teeth grazed the lobe of her ear. "I wouldn’t do that, my lady. You'll look a fool."  

Sansa turned her head slightly and stared at the thick stubble on his chin. She wanted to bite that chin. 

Jon grinned at her in delight. He knew her every thought.

"Come, Theon," he repeated and this time, the poor wretch opened the door. 

 

 

He hadn't meant to eavesdrop. It was his accursed fate which had brought him there as witness. He had been loitering outside the solar to ask a favor on behalf of a small northern lord, though he’d doubted his success.

He'd heard voices in the room and had recognized Sansa's among them. Fearing for her welfare, Theon had lingered, helpless but vigilant. 

The echoes of what transpired in that chamber came to him gradually, like blows to the head. At first, he thought Jon was committing some violence against her and his heart shrank, but when her moans slipped through the eaves and reached his ears, when her screams of pleasure were almost as beastly as her brother's, Theon knelt on the floor and dry-heaved, spitting up the meager food he had eaten that morning.

There was no mistaking those sounds.

He had always felt it would come to this and yet, he had also hoped for a miracle. Theon had discovered in his long life of penance and suffering that he was a godly man, after all. It didn't matter which god - Drowned or Old - but he believed in him with a vengeance. He believed that someone more powerful than all of them would come and wipe away this unendurable misery. He had thought this god would be Jon, when he liberated Winterfell from the Boltons, but now, he knew it was not the case. 

He knew it as he heard the sounds of unabashed sin pouring from the solar. He thought of his sister, Asha, and threw up again. 

After a while, he heard Jon's cool, unwavering command. "Come in, Theon." 

He bit down on his thumb to quell his nausea. Then he stood up and opened the door. 

 

 

Sansa could tell Theon was struck dumb with shock. His eyes kept wandering absently about the solar, seeing and not seeing. He seemed to be having some kind of fit: half of his face was paralyzed, the skin sloughing off the jaw like melted wax.

She wished she could say a kind word to him, but there could be no kindness while Jon slunk a possessive arm around her breasts. She did not look the part of the victim; the abused maiden who was being held by force. Theon had seen her in such a weak state when Ramsay had had his fill of her. He knew what a broken Lady Stark looked like, and this was not it. She had the presence of mind to look down in shame, not because she had let her brother do that to her, but because she had enjoyed it.

Jon sensed her discomfort and hummed in displeasure. He prodded her cheek with his thumb until she winced. She swatted his finger away and he smiled.

"Come closer, Theon," he said while still looking at Sansa. The passion which had risen to the surface with their fucking did not ebb away from his eyes, but was instead converted into a satisfied sense of ownership. He had gained a part of her, and he thirsted now for every single part. Soon, her territory would be his. 

Greyjoy knelt before their chair.

“Good,” Jon commended him. “Now, take your lady's foot in your mouth and worship it, for you are not worthy of her.”

Sansa blinked. She had a notion to draw her foot away, but she was too slow, because in the next breath, Theon’s lips were wrapped around her toes like a leech. She couldn’t get out of his hold even if she wanted to. His tongue swept the length of her sole and sucked on her heel, then returned dutifully to her toes, eyes glimmering with madness and pain and adoration.

She gasped. The sensation was like falling into a pool of eels. She could taste the sea spray and the electrifying touch of the swishing tail. She arched her body, feeling every nerve pouring down into Theon’s mouth.

Jon whispered in her ear. “Show me how it feels.”

He tipped her chin up and brought her lips to him. She couldn’t quite describe what it was.

Kissing was foreign to her. She had only been kissed by Joffrey and Littlefinger and it had always felt like someone else was standing in her place, another body, another mouth. Joffrey was kissing his own image, Petyr was kissing her mother’s.

What image was Jon kissing?

It was odd how he opened his mouth and covered hers, as if to eat, not kiss. He set down his teeth like a trap, pinning her in place, carving her pretty lips until they slowly tore open. She bled into her own mouth and swallowed. Her mouth crested his, fighting to escape his clutch. But it was not a battle she wanted to win or lose. She wanted to cover his mouth with hers. She wanted to ride on the wave and then be submerged with the tide. He sucked on her lower lip and her tongue caressed the roof of his mouth. Each time, one of them would seize the other and pull them underneath, mouth falling against mouth, but never quite conquering.

She closed her eyes and it felt like kissing Ghost, like she was burrowing herself between the direwolf’s fangs. After all, it seemed the purpose of kissing went beyond pleasure or affection. The true aim was knowledge. To know thyself and thy kind.

 

 

Theon kept her lovely foot in his mouth and watched with rapt attention as the brother and sister tore at each other’s lips. A trickle of blood fell from her mouth to her white breast.

Theon lowered his head and bit down on her toes, hoping to sever at least one.

But alas, Lady Stark was made of steel.

 

 

She returned to her chambers with Theon’s cloak covering her naked flesh. He walked behind her, keeping his distance, as if she were a leper. But he wanted to touch her. She could sense it. 

She forgot to remove his cloak when she collapsed on the bed. She fell asleep in it, dreaming of eels that ate each other's tails. 

 

Theon burned the cloak when it was given back to him. 

 

 

She did not leave her chamber for three days in order to make herself presentable again. The bruises around her mouth had to fade and the filth had to be washed carefully from her hair. She stood in the tub with her knees drawn to her chest and stared at her reflection in the water.

She spoke to it quietly. “I did it, as you told me. I learned to use what’s between my legs.”

The water rippled with a laugh.

“I _did_. I charmed him… I bewitched him, just like you said.” 

The water winked and darkened in mockery.

“Or …or he bewitched me,” she acquiesced with a shudder.

She sank herself lower, until the water reached her throat and her mouth and her nose.

_Is it enough?_ she cried out when she was underneath, the words turning into bubbles of air.

But she knew that once you crossed a certain threshold, nothing was ever enough.

 

 

She joined him for supper one evening, when she felt ready. She was dressed modestly, without care for artistry, and her skin was scrubbed red-clean. She hoped that he could see no trace of him on her.

Yet they were breaking bread in the solar, and the room still smelled of their commingling. It was a particular scent that reminded her of carrion, lathered in honey. She remembered being very young and Maester Luwin telling her of a Dornish dish of red peppers and goat and honey. She remembered licking her fingers and also wishing the taste of it would go away. The taste of him was carved on her tongue. He had made sure of it.

She sat down at the same table where he had fucked her. She recognized the indentations; she _knew_ what it felt like to embrace it naked.

Jon, however, hinted at nothing improper. He made no bawdy jokes or tawdry insinuations. In fact, he took his supper quite seriously, eating quietly and only looking at her in passing. As if all of this was beyond his making.

Sansa forced each bite down, grinding the meat between the teeth, feeling something like satisfaction when she managed to swallow.

Theon was not there to pour them wine, so Jon did it himself. She watched him pour into her goblet. She watched his steady hand on the pitcher.

There was one question, one notion above all others that haunted her. She did not know how to begin. Jon did not mince words. He appreciated brutal honesty. She would give it a try.

 “When you were inside me…” she began, her body suppressing a shudder of memory. Jon’s eyes instantly lifted from his plate. She had got his attention.

“When you were inside me,” she repeated, clutching the edge of the table, “you put your hand on my chest and …my heart slackened.”

Jon watched her intently. His complexion was cadaveric, almost ascetic. He did not look like the same man who had fucked her senseless.

“You slowed down my heartbeat,” she persevered. “I _felt_ it. It was like slowly expiring.”

And then, when he had released her heart, it had been ecstasy. She tried not to dwell on that. One could become obsessed with such a feeling.

“You may call me mad, but I know my body and mind,” she continued bravely. “I know _you_ did that.”

Jon wiped his mouth with a piece of cloth. “Did I say you were mad, my lady?”

“…no.”

“Well, then?”

Sansa bit her lip. She wanted to know if his death had gifted him the power to kill. It was no simple guesswork that he had come back stronger. He had given all of them ample proof of his new powers. But this talent was different. He could be lethal with a _touch_. She swallowed. “Could you – that is, could you stop someone’s heart entirely?”

Jon’s eyes narrowed. “Do you fear for your life, sweet sister?”

Sansa shook her head. “Actually, I was wondering if you … if it were possible to do it to others.”

 

 

Jon’s lips twitched imperceptibly. He had not expected that. But then, many things about her had been rather unexpected so far. Whatever her outward weakness, Lady Stark drank from the cruel well of the Old Gods.  

Yet, she rarely gave it voice. Had he drawn out her voice?

Did she know how much deeper he would make her drink?

Jon smiled without smiling. He dipped a piece of bread into the stew, letting it overflow. “ _Who_ do you have in mind?”

Sansa gripped her goblet until her knuckles turned white. “Well…we do have many enemies, don’t we, my lord?”

He licked his thumb. 

The ghosts of all her unwanted mentors grinned behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many thanks for your continued support & reviews, i'm always looking forward to sharing another installment of this twisted story with you. *more creepy is coming*

**Author's Note:**

> well, it seems fitting that this ship wakes me from my slumber. I know this idea isn't new or in any way original, but I wanted to put my spin on it. hope you enjoyed so far!


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